DALTON, Ga. — The SPLOST Advisory Committee reached consensus Monday on which project requests from the City of Dalton it will recommend funding from a potential Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax.

“We’ve got to get from $27 million down to $19 million,” said Chris Shiflett, chairman of the advisory committee. The committee previously settled on a goal of having a SPLOST of no more than four years and collecting roughly $66 million during that time; the city’s share of that should be approximately $19 million, but requests from various city agencies and departments totaled roughly $27 million.

Last week, committee members elected to earmark approximately $44 million of the potential $66 million for Whitfield County requests, such as courthouse renovations and repairs, a Riverbend Park near Southeast Whitfield High School and improvements to Westside Park. The $3 million in SPLOST funds remaining after the county and the City of Dalton received their portions would be dispersed to the other municipalities in the county: Cohutta, Tunnel Hill and Varnell.

The advisory committee, which will soon present its recommendations to the county Board of Commissioners, was formed in the wake of county voters defeating a proposed six-year, $100 million SPLOST in March. The most recent SPLOST for the county expired on June 30.

In order to trim roughly $8 million from the city requests, the advisory committee nixed an airport hangar, for approximately $1 million; a heavy rescue truck for the Dalton Fire Department, also about $1 million; and a $1.5 million Haig Mill Lake Park trail extension. City officials had previously indicated they plan to move forward with the vast preponderance of the projects they requested SPLOST funding for, if not all of them, so the advisory committee was essentially deciding which of those items warranted SPLOST funds and which the city would have to pay for on its own.

Improvements to the senior center, for roughly $425,000; $8.5 million for a new John Davis Recreation Center — the current center has significant flooding issues, among other problems; a $1.1 million ladder truck for the fire department; a pair of pumper trucks at approximately $750,000 each for the fire department; and a new building for storing and processing evidence for the Dalton Police Department, at approximately $1.6 million, all were approved by the advisory committee.

The police department has been in its current building since 1997, and the property and evidence section is “very, very confined,” Chief Cliff Cason explained last month. “We have absolutely used every square inch of space.”

The department holds 18,000-20,000 pieces of evidence at any given time, and while staff members check each month to see what, if anything, can be discarded, criminal statutes demand most evidence be saved, sometimes for years, Cason explained in October. There’s no room in the current building to add more storage, either.

The fire department tries to follow a routine where “first out” trucks, the ones that are sent out first to calls, are in regular service for 15 years, followed by five years in “reserve,” a time during which they’re deployed only when “first out” vehicles are unavailable due to maintenance, Todd Pangle, the fire chief, explained last month. Then, after 20 years, they’re sold at auction in order to recover some investment.

The firetruck outfitted with a 75-foot aerial ladder that dates to 2002 is the department’s top priority, as it has accrued 100,000 miles, and maintenance costs have increased by roughly 8% on the vehicle the past three years, according to Pangle. The cost of a replacement is estimated at $1.1 million, which includes equipment.

A pair of pumper trucks dating to 2001 and 2002 were next on his list, the fire chief said. The 2001 pumper has logged more than 91,000 miles and 9,200 hours of service, while the latter has accumulated more than 86,000 miles.

While some requests were fully funded and others completely eliminated Monday, the advisory committee also partially granted some requests, such as allotting roughly $735,000 of the $2 million the police department asked for for vehicle replacements. The advisory committee elected to fund those police cars in the same manner as it did for Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office vehicles — by the number of people living in the city versus the county — which came to $735,000 for Dalton’s police cars.

Another area in which the advisory committee took cues from last week’s county choices was in public works. Last week, the advisory committee opted to put the county’s bridge and resurfacing requests together and granted $8 million total. This week, it did the same, providing the city $2 million for bridges and resurfacing out of a requested $600,000 for bridges and $4 million for resurfacing.

Finally, the advisory committee voted in favor of providing approximately $2.6 million for full-size soccer fields at Heritage Point Regional Park. The request was for $3.5 million.

A SPLOST is a 1% tax on most goods sold in the county. The revenues can be used for certain types of projects but they can not be used for general operating expenses.

“We’re pretty much done,” Shiflett said at the conclusion of Monday’s meeting. The full SPLOST advisory committee has no more meetings scheduled at this time, although Shiflett will work with a handful of members to “set our words and verbiage” in a letter that will outline the projects they are recommending and explain the thought process behind those selections.

That letter will also contain “criticism of mismanagement” on the part of the city and, especially, the county, he said. The advisory committee members believe some of the project requests, such as resurfacing work, should have been addressed in annual budgets, rather than by seeking special funding.

Shiflett also wants as many advisory committee members present as possible for the Dec. 2 City Council and Dec. 9 county Board of Commissioners meetings, he said. “That would be very impactful, I think.”